This month marks the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. It was the height of the civil rights movement. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was supposed to resolve civil rights deprivations for minorities, but too many black Americans were still unable to vote. After a contentious struggle to pass the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson and most of Congress seemed to not have the stomach for any more civil rights legislation, so there was tepid support for the Voting Rights Act coming into 1965 despite widespread demonstrations.

At the time, only a tiny fraction of eligible black voters were registered to vote in Dallas County, Alabama, so activists in Selma planned to march to Montgomery. On their first attempt on Sunday, they were met at the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River by deputies and state troopers who were ordered by the local rogue sheriff to stop them even if by force. They beat, bloodied, and turned back the peaceful marchers, but the melee was captured by TV cameras and broadcast to a stunned nation. Americans were disturbed by the brutality and demanded action, so momentum immediately shifted support to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Martin Luther King finally led the third attempt of some 25,000 marchers to Montgomery and the rest is history.

Bloody Sunday changed the trajectory of the civil rights movement toward real change, so despite the regrettable tragedy that day, it is rightly commemorated for precipitating eventual positive change. Like every year, politicians flock to Selma for the anniversary; some to pay homage and honor the heroic effort, and sadly some to exploit the legacy.

Among the notable guests this year were Vice President Kamala Harris and Attorney General Merrick Garland. Harris used almost half her speech to demand a cease fire in Gaza to provide relief for beleaguered Palestinians who support savage terrorists which, like the rest of her speech, was hard to follow. Garland tried to cloak his failures in the otherwise noble history of the Department of Justice.

Garland recounted the ugly history of voter suppression and how the Department of Justice (DOJ) was created in 1870 to guarantee the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to all Americans. Too bad Republicans have ceded this ground to Democrats, because Garland failed to mention it was Republicans that created the DOJ to guarantee civil rights to black Americans and handle the explosion of litigation after the Civil War. He also skipped over how Republican President Uslyses S. Grant ordered the DOJ to aggressively prosecute the violent voter suppression tactics of the covert Democrat group known as the Klu Klux Klan.

There has been a long train of abuses and a long struggle to combat and rectify those abuses, but Garland seems to discount the tremendous progress. The past few elections have set records for minority voter participation and minorities have held every office in the land. That is not to say vigilance is still not required, but rather there are other bigger problems.

Garland claims there are still concerted efforts to deny minorities the vote, but really, he is conflating efforts to restore election integrity with voter suppression. He vows to fight restrictions on mail-in voting and requirements for voter ID. A clear majority of Americans support voter ID including 69% of black voters according to a Rasmussen Poll. Black Americans are increasingly offended by the notion they are incapable of getting an ID.

The Attorney General that persecutes Catholics, spies on concerned parents, and imprisons political prisoners without due process is simply telling us he will ignore voter fraud and protect corrupt government agencies interfering in elections. About 99% of Americans have some form of ID because it’s needed to do just about everything, so no one thinks it’s a form of voter suppression to verify a voter’s identification. However, those who intend to cheat with voter fraud insist an ID requirement is onerous – no one is fooled.

The bipartisan 2005 Commission on Federal Election Reform co-chaired by Democrat President Jimmy Carter and former Republican Secretary of State James A. Baker III found that some form of ID was essential to election integrity and found that “mail in” voting was very vulnerable to voter fraud. Almost 20 years later, Garland is preaching the opposite because unbridled mail in voting has a dramatic effect in elections or some call it cheating.

There is no denying mail in voting delivered the Democrat victory in 2020. From the 2000 to 2016 presidential elections, the votes cast each election increased in average of 2,250,000 votes, but in 2020 a staggering 26 MILLION more votes were counted in the presidential election than 2016 – that’s a tenfold increase!

Did 26 MILLION more Americans vote? Or were just 26 MILLION more votes counted? Garland has no curiosity about whether that many more Americans voted, but he is committed to be sure Democrats can count has many votes as they deem necessary.

Garland panders to minority audiences, but he is exploiting them to disguise his dedication to preserving voter fraud tactics. He knows the citizens and many states are watching this election more closely, so the previous election shenanigans may be constrained. Therefore, he has presided over the tried-and-true totalitarian tactic of indicting, convicting, and imprisoning any political opponents. Some call it lawfare, but Garland and his boss, Biden, have weaponized the far-reaching powers of the DOJ to disqualify the leading challenger.

Garland has no integrity and no shame. It is hard to imagine that this shabby political hack was almost appointed to the Supreme Court. Thank God Senator Mitch McConnell got that one right, but Garland has sacrificed the integrity of the DOJ. Turning the DOJ into a cheap partisan hit mob, he is destroying justice in America. He must go!

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but he who makes his ways crooked will be found out” (Proverbs 10:9).

Pete Riehm is a conservative activist and columnist in south Alabama. Email him at peteriehm@bellsouth.net or read all his columns at http://www.renewamerica.com/.